Memento (**********10/10)

Year:  2000
Genre:  Drama, Thriller, Mystery
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Guy Pearce, Joe Pantoliano, Carrie-Anne Moss, Stephen Tobolowsky, Jorja Fox, Callum Keith Rennie, Thomas Lennon
Director:  Christopher Nolan
Run time:  115 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     The gem in this box set is Memento, a 2000 film that we’re getting a chance to revisit.  Pan’s Labyrinth was a big hit, and while Blindness didn’t sell millions of copies it was likely watched by more people than Memento, which existed only as one of those movies included on the “best movies of the decade” lists made by nerds and movie geeks, and read only by other nerds and movie geeks.  Perhaps now people will take a shot at watching the film, now that director Christopher Nolan has gone on to bigger and more successful things like The Dark Knight and Inception.  That being said, Memento might still be his best film.

     The way the story in Memento plays out backwards is not just a stylistic quirk or a contrived device.  It’s absolutely essential to the story and builds to a shattering conclusion.  When I saw this film in 2000, I thought Guy Pearce was going to be the DeNiro of the 90s – clearly the best actor of the decade.  He has been very good, but he’s never quite recaptured the jaw-dropping performance he had in this movie.  I didn’t expect Joe Pantoliano to become a great character actor, but I did expect more from him following this film.  Same goes for Carrie-Anne Moss.  But it appears they managed to catch lightning in a bottle with Memento, likely thanks to Christopher Nolan.

   Blindness (******6/10)

Year:  2008
Genre:  Drama
Countries:  Japan, Brazil, Canada
Language:  English
Starring:   Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover, Alice Braga, Don McKellar, Maury Chaykin, Gael Garcia Bernal, Sandra Oh, Yusuke Iseya, Yoshino Kimura
Director:  Fernando Meirelles
Run time:  120 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     Blindness was not the magnificent movie I had expected.  The director, Fernando Meirelles, had made two sensational films before this – the classic City of God and the terrific The Constant Gardener.  On that level, Blindness was a disappointment.  Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo were adequate at best as the couple at the centre of the film.  Moore plays the only person who can still see in a world that has gone blind.  You’d think she could do whatever she wanted – but in THIS land of the blind, it’s the guy with the gun in the hospital ward who is king.  Blindness is still interesting and visually intriguing.  But it’s stale and slow more often than not.

   Pan’s Labyrinth (*********9/10)

Year:  2006
Genre:  Drama, Fantasy
Countries:  Mexico, Spain
Language:  English
Starring:  Ariadna Gil, Ivana Baquero, Sergi Lopez, Maribel Verdu, Doug Jones, Alex Angulo, Manolo Solo
Director:  Guillermo Del Toro
Run time:  120 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     Pan’s Labyrinth remains the only Guillermo Del Toro movie to really be taken seriously by the cinema snob-world at large.  That’s fine, because it’s his best movie.  But the rest of his films deserve a look as well – the two Hellboy movies, Blade II, The Orphanage.  Especially Blade II, I have a real soft spot for that movie.  At any rate, it’s Pan’s Labyrinth that gets included in this box set from Alliance Films, because it was a film-festival success, as were the others.  As are all the movies coming out in “Festival Collection” box sets August 17th. 

     I think more people will be familiar with this film than they will with Blindness and Memento.  It’s more recent and was a bigger success than either of those two movies.  And it really was fantastic.  A fantasy where a young girl escapes into a dream world and also a brutal, harsh story of human survival in wartime and the escape from sadistic violence.  It stars a kid, and it involves a dream world of fantasy, but rest assured – this movie is not for young children.  It’s for adults.  And if you have already seen it, this is as good a time as any to own it – this box set includes the interesting Blindness and the brilliant Memento.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 10th, 2010 at 2:53 am and is filed under 2000, 2006, 2008, Drama, Fantasy, Mystery, Thriller. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.